Adv: Mexican Motor Mafia [by Science of Tomorrow]

Game Review: Mexican Motor Mafia
Release Date: June 15, 2005
Developer:  Science of Tomorrow
Genre: Adventure > Quest
System Requirements: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP, Pentium III 600 MHz, 128 RAM, Geforce or better Video Card with 32 MB RAM, Direct X 9.0c+
Players: 1
Price: $16.95
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Mexican Motor Mafia takes you back. It takes you back to the good old days when Grand Theft Auto was a top-down, 2-D automobile-based game. It takes you back to the days when Antonio Banderas was a desperado with vengeance on his mind. It takes you back to a happy place that any gamer should be excited to return to.

Your name? Well, that doesn’t matter, does it? What does matter is that you have a wicked cobra shirt on and you’re ready to ride. Your brother was shot and killed, in front of his children no less, by Priest, the leader of the Red Texas Four who escaped from prison to go on to terrorize the general citizenry. This aggression will not stand and you’re on a mission to take down each of the members of the Red Texas Four: La Toro, Tito, Whistler and Priest.

How are you going to take these dangerous men down? With a couple of firearms, a sweet ride and your arrow keys, or if it strikes your fancy, the WASD keys. You view the action from a top-down perspective, use the keyboard to move your cars around, and aim with the mouse. Your weapons are limited by the space inside your vehicle, so when you begin, you can only fire out of the left side of your car. As you move up in the world and purchase better cars, you gain armoring, speed, cargo space, and gun space, meaning you can go faster, take more damage and fire all sorts of ammunition from both side of your car.

Game action takes place in the form of GTA style missions. You roll into a town that will both act as a neutral sanctuary for you from battles and as a one-stop shop for all your vengeance needs. In towns you’ll find traders to sell or buy equipment from, auto-shops where you can repair or purchase cars, gun shops to strap up at, and job centers to pick up on the latest rumors of criminal dealings. When you accept a mission, its location will be highlighted on the map screen that you navigate by driving across.

When you arrive at a mission location, gameplay switches into a deathmatch arena style of play. It’s just you and however many bandit-filled cars happen to be on that level. You achieve victory when your engine is the only one left revving on the field. Your enemies will be in several levels of vehicles with several styles of weapons, each of which will require it’s own particular strategy for defeat. If you can’t seem to get the best of a particular gang of baddies, never fear. When you’re beaten, all you lose is a portion of your cash and then you get to start back up from a neaby town. Your progress and weapons will be safe. You’ll learn to love this aspect of gameplay, especially at first, because you can expect to get waxed quite a bit until you master the learning curve for controlling your car.

Some of your missions will involve gophering for traders. Some will involve defeating rival business ventures or local gangs. Some are even humanitarian, like rescuing children or stopping a wedding to a crooked thief. Some series of missions, however, will give you the option to equip special items to your car. This is where you can best customize your gameplay experience. Items like rockets and mines and pieces of dynamite drastically affect the way you drive your car because with anything explosive, you're just as likely to take yourself out as you are anyone else. But for those players that like to drop their payload and ride off as the smoke rises behind them, the option is there. There's even a detonation-happy option for all the RC car enthusiasts out there.

Mexican Motor Mafia provides a solid shareware gaming experience. The graphics are nicely detailed, the music is rocking and the missions are plentiful. Sure, all of your missions involve shooting and destroying “X” number of cars, but destroying those cars is fun. It would be nice to have a way to check what current missions are instead of having to roam the map randomly, hoping to find a big red X that means you've found where you were going. When you've satisfied your vengeance, you have the option to continue riding through the Southwest wreaking havoc on criminals and lowlifes, but now at your own leisurely pace, which makes for a heap of replay value.

Graphics: 8
The environments in Mexican Motor Mafia are real standouts. The arenas are static, but attention is paid to them. Textures are highly detailed and burning rubber leaves satisfying tracks. The map screen is a fun alternative to simply clicking on your next environment and the comic book “cinematics” are a fitting way to tell this pulp-style story.

Sound: 9
The music in Mexican Motor Mafia inspires ass-kicking from the get-go. With the ability to switch songs with the bracket keys, the gamer has his choice of 10 guitar-heavy Mexi-cali style rock tunes. Music too harsh for a cruise around the map? Slow the pace down a bit. The tracks not hard enough for a showdown with smugglers? Switch a few tracks over for some hot licks. Sound effects in game are competent, if not phenomenal. Gunshots and explosions sound like they should and engine-noise and screeching tires come through nice and clear, though wisely taking a backseat to the soundtrack.

Gameplay: 8
The gameplay in Mexican Motor Mafia is very simple, which is both a boon and a curse. For those that enjoy using their arrow keys to cruise and take down criminals, they'll be thrilled. The controls take some getting used to, but gamers will find their driving style quickly and controls easily become a matter of reflex. But for the gamer that enjoys some variety, some curveballs, from time to time. They won't find it here. All the missions are the same. They all involve blowing up a set number of cars. It would have been nice to have to try to save another car from being blown to bits, or participate in a race or two, nothing revolutionary, just a little variety to spice things up and keep gamers coming back.

Value: 8
At $16.99, Mexican Motor Mafia is a solid deal. The game has the feel of professional polish all over it (except for some of the mission-assignment writing, which could use a little more drama and character to it). The main mission of the game will take somewhere in the neighborhood of four to seven hours, depending on your driving skills, but you can keep playing as long as you want, picking up the odd job here and there and taking out the garbage. The fact that, as advertised on the game's forums, you can mod the engine to add new cars, implies exciting possibilities not only for new units and new weapons, but new missions as well. Mexican Motor Mafia would be a great game for the mod community to go nuts with.

Concept: 7
The top-down driving action genre has been covered, and in a big way by titles like Grand Theft Auto, but Mexican Motor Mafia stands on its own. With excellent graphics, easy to follow gameplay, and a fun story, Mexican Motor Mafia does its job and does it well.

Fun: 8
True, there's only one type of fun to be had, but anyone who's going to pick up Mexican Motor Mafia is going to get exactly what they paid for. Trying to find the best weapon to get the job done, driving from town to town trading for just the right amount of a certain item to get a delivery made, whipping your ride around a soccer field, dodging bullets and sticks of dynamite, this is all good stuff, and there's plenty of it.

Overall: 8
Mexican Motor Mafia is the kind of work that deserves to get noticed. It takes on the kind of gameplay normally tackled by big name developers and does admirably with it. The music is excellent (not some MIDI rip-off of an NES game) and really helps to round out the overall feeling of the game, it alone would be worth almost the cost of the game in MP3 downloads. Gamers looking for an action fix should take the time to check it out!

Added: September 16th 2005
Reviewer: Michael Scarpelli
Score:
Hits: 6529
Language: english